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Boeing VP ponders blogging, Twitter and social media

At the time of the 777 first flight, so-called “traditional media” ruled. Blogs were virtually unheard of. There was no Twitter. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer was still printing a newspaper.

The approaching first flight of the 787, (scheduled for sometime in the second quarter of this year,) has got Boeing VP Randy Tinseth thinking about social media.

Tinseth, vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle, keeps one of Boeing’s two official blogs. (The other, dedicated to the tanker competition, has not been updated in six months.)

“As we get closer to the first flight of the 787 Dreamliner, clearly there’s going to be more and more focus on day-to-day, if not minute-to-minute progress. It’s the first new airplane program where we’ve seen the full effects of ‘new media’ or ‘social media’ coverage,” Tinseth writes on his blog. “Forums and sites are proliferating – ranging from fan and hobbyist pages to journalist blogs and everything in between – chronicling even the most obscure details gleaned from ‘sources.’”

Some blogs, he says, are doing a good job. He doesn’t name them. But others are printing unconfirmed rumors that are not true, Tinseth said.

The rumor mill isn’t new. Neither is the fact that companies want to control information.

“The challenge is distinguishing those sources and pages from the various blogs, Twitters and other sites which sometimes position themselves as authoritative – but really are not,” he said.

In related news, The Onion “reports” Tuesday that Boeing has made a 40,000-foot emergency slide. (The Onion is a comic fake newspaper and Web site.) The doctored Onion photo appears to feature a Boeing 767 plane, a Boeing spokesman confirmed.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..